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Title details for Waiting on the Moon by Peter Wolf - Wait list

Waiting on the Moon

Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses

by Peter Wolf
Peter Wolf
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
In the tradition of classic collections of observations and musings such as Christopher Isherwood's I Am a Camera and Truman Capote's The Dogs Bark, Waiting on the Moon is a treasure trove of vignettes from a legendary musical figure whose career spans more than six decades and is still going strong.

Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of "fellow travelers" whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf's studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.

After Wolf joined the J. Geils Band as their front man and his musical fame grew, he rubbed shoulders with other notables who left significant impressions on him, including members of the Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, and Van Morrison. Wolf's marriage to Faye Dunaway is presented in a clear yet balanced and nuanced light.

Told with gentle humor and often heart-rending poignancy, the word portraits in Waiting on the Moon provide a revealing glimpse of artists, writers, actors, and musicians as they work—the creative forces that drive them to achievement; the demons they battle; the patterns of their human relationships. They are meant to inspire not only empathy but also admiration. Like Isherwood, Wolf remains "a camera with its shutter open."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 11, 2025

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781668646700
      • File size: 326430 KB
      • Duration: 11:20:02

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 15, 2025
      Elegant, eloquent vignettes from a star-studded life. "David [Lee Roth] and I were lead singers, each to varying degrees demanding, difficult, obsessive, paranoid, neurotic, and competitive. Ironically, both he and I would end up being kicked out of our bands, but for very different reasons." A kid from the Bronx whose dad was also a talented vocalist, Wolf is best known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1983, but he also had a solo career and studied painting in Boston before he was a musician. He was married to actress Faye Dunaway during the peak of her career; among many interesting photos is a poolside shot titledThe Morning After: the two of them with her Oscar, scattered newspapers, and a copy ofLove in the Ruins by Walker Percy. The chapters focus on a wide variety of cultural figures with whom Wolf has crossed paths: musical greats from Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to Van Morrison and Mick Jagger, but also Eleanor Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Lowell, Julia Child, Tennessee Williams, and more. Describing Bob Dylan playing "A Hard Rain a-Gonna Fall" for the first time in a nearly empty New York club: "In one seismic moment, he had brought us into new and unexplored terrain, just as Picasso helped radically reshape the landscape of modern painting withLes Demoiselles d'Avignon." On setting up a recording session with Merle Haggard: "I could not have prepared a bank heist with greater attention to detail." During an anxiety-filled afternoon audience with Hitchcock at his home, hoping for a soundtrack commission, the master repeatedly offers his guest something to drink. Sensing "that this was his way of checking to see if I was one of those hard-drinking, drugged-out, unreliable rock-and-rollers," Wolf sticks to tea. Nothing comes of the meeting. Only years later does he learn that Hitchcock's wife "strictly frowned upon his drinking alone at home in the afternoon. However, he could indulge if he was with a guest." Recollections of a rock 'n' roll life, charmingly related.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      February 7, 2025
      Although ostensibly a memoir, Waiting on the Moon is mostly about people Peter Wolf, lead vocalist of the J. Geils Band, has met along the way. Plenty of other people, in fact. They range from John Lennon to Van Morrison, Muddy Waters to John Lee Hooker, Alfred Hitchcock to David Lynch. His anecdotes begin when, as a 10-year-old "energetic dyslexic boy," he happens to sit next to Marilyn Monroe in a Manhattan movie theater. As the movie starts to play, a sleepy Monroe rests her head on his shoulder. This lovely story is typical of Wolf's approach. Generous and expansive in spirit, he is less interested in writing a memoir than sharing interesting stories. Another tale involves the young Bob Dylan. One day in 1961, while browsing through a record bin inside Izzy Young's Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, Wolf hears someone singing. When asked who the "unusual" voice belongs to, he's told, "Oh, that's some new kid . . . He just rolled into town." An enjoyable ramble down Wolf's memory lane with his many friends and acquaintances.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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